A quick aide memoir for the future: Examples of people being arrested or convicted for stuff they wrote on social networks.
1. Paul Chambers:
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
A chap made an obviously ranty joke in a tweet, and was convicted of ‘menace’.
2. Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan
Organised riot events on Facebook.
3. Azhar Ahmed
Charged with a ‘racially agravated public order offence’ for posting an immature anti-war rant on Facebook.
On this last story: Index on Censorship notes that there was no actual racial content in Ahmed’s message; author Tony White points out that the same sentiments, expressed more eloquently by Guardian readers, went unremarked and are run-of-the-mill; and Kenan Malik suggests that Ahmed’s arrest is part of a growing appetitie for “the criminalisation of Islamic dissent”.
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